


exit stage.

by orphan_account



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Drug Use, Gen, Vex'ahlia-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 15:42:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13274628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “The past was worse. We know that, for sure, and life has gone to shit, as of late. But living in tomorrow's has become very appealing as well, hasn’t it? Tomorrow, Pike is going to be here, and Cassandra has drawn up permits so that the market can open again the square. The day after that, my brother will begin the first services for our soldiers, and perhaps that will be something that their families can take solace from, right, Percy? I’ll be here tomorrow, with you.”A pause lingered between them as though he was weighing his response in his mind.“Whatever you say, dear.”_A short Critical Role horror story. Spoilers up to Episode 53, Canon Divergence from there.





	exit stage.

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the Archive warning added to this fic as well as the warnings in the tags!
> 
> A little Critical Role horror fairy tale, that no joke- I started way back in 2016, it's now 2018! It was languishing in my drafts forever and a half but I've finally decided to clean it up and post it!

The market at dusk was exactly as she remembered it, covered in tattered red and white canvas tents, each housing a shopkeeper in a ragged, patched, cloak. Pewter cups clattered in shivering toasts made over fires kindled by salvage in the makeshift block designated as the tavern. The ground beneath her feet was blackened and hard, the chips of charcoal still cracking from what had once been polished cobblestone. Despite all that, a market it was, teeming with people carrying what remained of their possessions through each tent, crying out vain attempts to trade for food and clothing. 

 

Whitestone had survived the Chroma Conclave, and in its last stand to say that the city had given everything was simply too trite, too easy and empty a statement for what it had been. A fortnight's battle had left the streets littered with bodies yet to be claimed, each with a raven feather tucked behind their left ear, a small sign that their sacrifice would be remembered and honored. The city itself had fallen swaying to its knees, the mountain it sat upon spliced and its grand noble houses and castles toppled. Twists of ivy curled around unearthed white stones, and perhaps a good wizard or sorcerer would have pulled them gently from the earth if they had not all been decimated so severely at the hands of Thordak, the Cinder King. 

 

She knelt beside a spring of the stones and gathered them carefully into her hand, an amount that was nothing more than enough to sate her appetite for pretty things. She would leave the rest to those who knew how to use it. 

 

She pulled the cowl of her cloak up higher over her mouth, held in place by strips of thin mail that kept only her eyes visible as she scanned over the crowd gathered before the smallest tent, tucked into very nearly the edge of the market square. Her eyes itched suddenly, as the cool air blew a cloud of black powder just over her, filling her lungs with a crushing, familiar, dust. Its weight settled inside her, no longer enough to trigger a cough. Underneath her cloak, her lips curled up in a small smile. It seemed that all of Whitestone demanded the weapons that had been at first restricted to its amassed standing army, no longer content to trust in wards of protection. Black powder was in fashion, and the clicks of the cheaply forged revolvers that the people of the city had pillaged from fallen soldiers greeted her like footsteps leading down a long, downward spiral. 

 

Victor, the merchant, was in the very back of the tent, his artificial hand flapping with the uneven rhythm of his voice as it rose above the crowd. He was seated on a stool missing its third leg, rocking back and forth to keep his balance while he bargained with customers for their salvage, his requests punctuated by the appropriate amounts of hems and haws. Victor's wild eyes would survey each piece with unmasked hunger, before firmly shaking his head, looking as much like a dog out of a bath as one could. 

 

"-N-no, can't give you my powder for that. Gots' nothing inside of it, jus’ a little twisty that is. I don't trade for toys.", Victor was telling a large man in a deep red shirt, the sleeves torn off to show the still-pink scars he had earned in the battle. His breastplate glistened with what could only be the pride of nobility, and his eyes glittered with bloodlust. 

 

By now, she had pushed herself to the front of the crowd, a trail of spit aimed too well at her face trailing down her mask. In the days immediately following Thordak's fall, Whitestone had radiated with hope. Weeks after, it was pulsing with anger and the need for vengeance, having raised an appetite for violence which was mounting to become insatiable. Shaking her head, she sidestepped the man as he brought both fists down on the table, enraged. 

 

"I think your transaction has come to an end, darling.", she said to him, paying no mind to the broadsword across his back, and the flat, sharpened daggers that hung at his belt. "Leave this poor man alone, why don't you? He's only trying to make a living like the rest of us in the gods-fucked city."

 

"Fuck if you know.", he grunted, turning his depthless eyes upon her. "Wait your turn bitch, what're you gotta give here, the clothes off your back? Roll in th' hay with this little scummy bastard, I bet."

 

"How charming.", she spat. 

 

The titles rolled off her tongue then, and she was pleased to discover that the visceral pleasure of lowering her hood and pulling her cowl to her collarbones had not been even slightly dulled by slaying a dragon by her own hand. The crowd quieted considerably, except for the low muttering of children hidden in their mother's skirts, clamoring for a look at the Lady of the Grey Hunt, The Savior of Whitestone. 

 

"L-lady Vex'ahlia, of course, you know you and your company are always welcome, always to my resources.", Victor sputtered. "I keep the Hogshead for the Lord, and anything else you require-" 

 

Vex turned back to the crowd. "Get out, all of you. Wait outside, and I will ensure this man cheats none of you out of your earned honors."

 

"N-now Lady Vex'ahlia, I run a fine business here, y'see, there's no scalping goings-on no matter what's been said-"

 

"Shut up, Victor." 

 

The swarm began to move, a shuffle of clattering armor and salvage left behind as they moved as a trampling horde towards the white flaps of Victor's tent. Metal scraped and screams of both pain and discontent rose as the traffic funnelled into a bottleneck, snapping the canvas ropes that held the front of the tent to the ground. 

 

"They's all so des'prate. But the dragon's been dead 'cause a' you and what have all these people got to be so afraid of?", Victor muttered, arranging the salvage on his table into several neat piles. 

 

"Each other. They're all quite terrified of their neighbors.", Vex replied, her voice flat with a practiced calm. 

 

"Mmm. Well, that sounds bad. Ah, ah yes, the powder-", Victor ducked under his table and struggled for several moments, cursing as he lifted a container about the size of a large tankard, bound in soft, worn leather. 

 

"Here you go, Lady Vex'ahlia.", he said as he flipped open the lid for her inspection. "It's the purest. The good stuff, I've been saving for you." 

 

"I'm sure."

 

She nodded her approval and waited as Victor sealed the lid. Percy would need more of the powder in time, and she thought it in all their best interests to spare him a second trip to the heart of their desecrated city. 

 

"Victor, actually- I was searching for another kind of product...", she began, shifting back to her heels. "I've heard from the townspeople, you have this mixer for a drink, and they say that you'll relive your memories, like going back in time to see yourself all over again. Sounds marvellous...if you would know where one might procure such a potion..."

 

Vex leaned in close, and winked at Victor, feeling his sour breath wash over her cheeks. 

 

"Mmm-hmmm. But I can't just give that away, even if you're all the little gods now, I gots to make a living like all of you did.", he said, very carefully. 

 

Vex drew away from him and scoffed. "I only deal fairly, Victor. Of course you know of my reputation." 

 

She reached a hand deep into her cloak, and pulled on the necklace that hung at her throat, breaking the chain where it was fastened around her neck. A single cracked, cloudy jewel was delicately placed at its center, cased with silver which still shone brightly despite having been bent and dented where it curled to meet the center. 

 

"I-is that-" 

 

"Yes. I have no use for it now. Consider it the payment for whatever garbage they offer you when I leave." 

 

"O-Of course, I don't know- I- Take as many as you need, Lady Vex'ahlia. And know you're always, always welcome." 

 

She nodded again, and heaved the tankard over the table, into her bag, the three tiny vials of glittering, viscous black liquid clenched tightly in her fist. 

  
  


Vex had felt ill for what had been close to months, since returning from the Feywild with Fentheras, there had been a nagging tightness in center. It had blossomed into sharp stabs of pain in the back of her head, and the distinct feeling something inside her was wanting to claw its way out of her chest. She had been convinced she was cursed, then pregnant, then cursed again. 

 

Her brother had barely hidden his amusement at her sudden clumsiness with Jarrett, and Percy had buried his panic at either possibility in longer hours spent tinkering in his workshop upon their return home. 

 

"It's a holdover of that diseased stream in the Shademurk. Disgusting, if you ask me, but you'll probably shit it out like you did the rest of it in the Feywild. I know you and your brother hate yourselves, but next time try not to drink out the river where all of Syngorn's shitholes probably empty.", Scanlan had told her, upon detecting no magical interference within her person. 

 

"Thank you, dear. Your bedside manner is impeccable.", Vex chuckled, curled up in her bed in her quarters in Whitestone. 

 

She could very nearly see the calm wind blowing through the garden below her window, and watched intently as Cassandra shuffled up the rampart between the houses, her stern features softened by content. She sighed, fixing the wall with a brooding gaze.

 

"There was a lot of shit in the Feywild.", Scanlan said with a shrug, but she had drifted off by then, back to a mercifully painless half-sleep. 

 

The party's extended stay in Whiestone meant that Pike and Zahra became her regular visitors, usually bringing with them more mutterings of gossip from the Council. On the Thursday, though, Pike carried with her a tome bound with reptilian skin, the sight of which made Vex's skin prickle like another attack of the sickness. 

 

Pike flicked through pages, perched on the foot of Vex's bed. 

 

"Scanlan said you weren't cursed, and I've tried everything I know. When I was younger, Wilhand told me that there are some illnesses that don't have "real" cures, like spells, or potions, or even the complete resurrections of a body might not cure every illness, because-" 

 

"-Because there are illnesses that live in the mind.", Vex finished for her, not quite believing what Pike had implied. "Do you really think I'm doing this, for the sympathy and Zahra's entirely too detailed report of the exploits of the de Rolo court?" 

 

"Never. But you were in the Feywild. You don't remember what happened after you got your bow-", Pike tilted her chin towards the bow, which lay forlorn across Vex's table, the bowstring slack with disuse. "-and no one remembers Trinket leaving you, or why you freed him from the necklace. I've been reading, and perhaps- perhaps something happened when you were there, and your memory has blocked it. And this illness...is simply another way of getting that out." 

 

"Or perhaps...", Vex started, her voice steeled with coldness, fear clenching around her throat at Pike's insidious suggestion. "I just need to take a long shit. And maybe, I feel like doing just that, so you'll need to be on your way." 

 

Within the week, the illness subsided, and her shame peaked as she met Jarrett in bowels of the armory, as he polished a gilded shield that hung atop its entrance. 

 

"I'm sorry about...you know, we were in the Feywild, and I did something very stupid and genuinely thought that it might have been- I'm sorry to have put you through that. I hope this won't change who we are, because your company is a treat, honestly."

 

Jarrett shook his head, carefully perching himself atop the sill of display case to look down at Vex on the ground. 

 

"Yeah, I heard Percival made you a princess in his court out there. Was that- did you two hit the sack and feel guilty about it afterwards?", he teased her. "Because that's fine, all good and fine and all of that, except I wouldn't ever want a child. The world is shit, isn't it, Queen Vex'ahlia?" 

 

She giggled, and kicked at the bottom rungs of his ladder. "I suppose so, you dirty commoner. That helps me go to sleep at night, too."

 

“I think I want a bloodline too, but you know, keeping my blood inside me is the way to go.”, said Jarrett. “It’s important to have a still-beating heart.”

 

Thus, the chapter fell behind them, all but forgotten. There were still dragons blazing a steady course through to destroy the earthen plane, and stopping them could not spare a moment for a headache. 

  
  


Vex stumbled in the flat, frozen sheet of night that enveloped Whitestone, set to an orchestra of drunken laughter and half-spirited jigs which echoed through the still air. The clamor of Victor’s tent was left further behind her as she scaled the jagged peaks of fallen buildings, jumping with ease from walls of bricks splintered apart and burned wafer-thin.  People lived here, she reminded herself, a pacing whisper like a prayer on her lip, and she had been one of those people. Vex had loved flying, but despite the blood that thundered in her ears, and the wetness of her tongue as she licked at her own dry, cracking lips, she had been dead for a long, long, time. 

 

During the battle, she had flown as close as she could to Thordak’s maw, loosing her final dragon slaying arrow into the very top of his throat. It had been Zahra’s creation, perfected by Percy and slipped into her quiver at the very last moments’ notice. A needle-thin tip of the clearest stone arrowhead disappeared inside the folds of the dragon’s mouth, lost like a wire fishhook too weak to capture its prey. Its shaft sunk neatly into the flesh, nothing more than a splinter that would be crushed against Thordak’s massive, lolling tongue. 

 

Fentheras itself shuddered on her shoulder, and the ringing of Vex’s ears ceased for not more than a second.

 

In that time, the world exploded. 

 

Thordak’s jaw burned, curling inward with arcane fire, white flames shooting from the threads of flesh that hung his scaly jaw atop the bone. His teeth shattered and fell, shrapnel and dust that enveloped Vex like a cloud as she scrambled to keep her grip on her broom. Smoke billowed from the very edge of her vision, as the dragon gasped in pained desperation, the fire which came from its belly spurting forth at its throat. Thordak’s scales began to blister, turning inside upon themselves as the beast wailed mournfully and swung, drunkenly in Whitestone’s square. An enormous wave of black, viscous blood splashed across the walls of the de Rolo castle, as Thordak’s wing, destroyed by the army’s gunfire, laid waste to the castle’s turrets. 

 

Vex embraced death, then, blissful with heat as she fell, her skin scorching as she found her final resting place in the wet dirt that sustained the Sun Tree. 

 

Death was a hot thing, warmer than she had ever been in her short and bloody life. 

 

But, as these stories went without question, Keyleth refused to let that happen. 

 

She cared far too much about Vax to let Vex go.

 

Perhaps understandably, Vex had lost her broom. 

  
  


She found the house at the very edge of what had been Whitestone’s commerce district, its baked clay walls still charming in the moonlight. It had been a deep reddish shale, the blunt hacks of a broadsword marking lines beside names scratched in the bricks beside the door. 

 

People had not just lived here, but grown in the ruddy earth where vines now burst from the ground, and taken shelter underneath the rank hides stretched out across the tops of each hastily cobbled wall as a makeshift roof. 

 

The garden had turned to bramble, which Vex brushed aside, a mild annoyance as her fingers scrabbled in the darkness to find the rusted lock that held the door closed. She brushed it with her fingertips, and fished the key from her belt. The lock had long ago rusted to uselessness, and using a key was more a sign of the deep respect she had grown to have for Whitestone in the time when she had lived. 

 

It was not a place to pillage or be forgotten. Whitestone had been their temple to resistance and rose even today, a shattered spire against the dead sky that told the world people lived here, no matter what fate had befallen them. 

 

She had chosen the house weeks ago for its dirt and softness, having been cleared of rubble that was sharp and dangerous and useful long ago. Pillagers had worked their way inside the city by circling the outskirts, clearing the enclaves before advancing on to the lower nobles’ properties. 

 

Whitestone found itself in the middle of the flood, as it were. A torrent of refugees that spanned one messy, breathless and ragged line from the city’s gate to the path that had been carved through the mountains themselves. The guns and munitions, that flowed over the rapids of scrabbling hands and crushed hopes, chasing each other to death in rivers of gunmetal and smoke.

 

Despite all of that, what concerned Percy the most were the vials that Vex now held in her hands, the cork rubbing against the bracers that had she had pulled Fentheras’ bowstring against.

 

The potion was called Moondust, half of a legend and half of a reality, the old wives tale that had come to be tried after Thordak’s fall. The little coal-colored vials had scattered into the streets, passed underhand as the refugees waited in line at Whitestone’s walls. 

 

It was not the first of these potions, something to be taken in the company of good friends and loose inhibitions, but the magic that bled from Whitestone’s veins changed that. 

  
  


Jarrett had told her the secret, giggling like he was a schoolgirl, so frothy and unbidden he had been stumbling over himself. He had taken Vex’s face in both hands, far too roughly for a lover and with a smile so wide his lips had begun to split. 

 

“It’s the tree, Vex. That fuckin’ tree. It’s the whole world, inside that tree. And you get the water, the water of the whole world, and you drink it and you have a drink with the whole world, Vex. You can see the whole world.”, he rambled, a mad paladin on his cause. She had held him at the waist, steadying the guard she had so often found solace in, as she led the both of them into the de Rolo estate. 

 

“Mmmhmmm. I’m sure.” 

 

He stopped then, making himself heavy in her arms and throwing them forward on the path just before the Sun Tree. In the days since Thordak’s fall, Pelor’s patron in Whitestone had been gored beyond recognition. Warhammers arced in the sky, punching square holes into its bark that bled dark, thick sap, to the great merriment of the assembled population. 

 

A great cheer rose from the raucous crowd, many still wearing their own rubble as though they had congregated at the tree rather than gone to collect what was left of their homes. Men clutching goblets rushed forward, pouring the sap into their mouths still bloodied by the battle. Vex had not seen a ritual of this magnitude in her time in Whitestone, nor one that disturbed her as deeply as the Sun Tree’s destruction. 

 

Children, who had been housed in the castle during the very worst of Thordak’s assault, ran forward in a grimy, large horde, clutching picks and daggers far too large for their wet and tiny hands, intent on joining in on the revelry. 

 

Vex scoffed, despite herself, thinking of Keyleth, who would have happily stopped this natural progression of events as well if she hadn’t drunk herself half dead to skirt the responsibility. She would have rushed forward herself, but something held her back, like a tight grip on her wrist. She had slayed the Cinder King and wore his skin as her jewels, yet even she would be crushed underfoot were she to break up the crowd and demand an explanation. These were days of mourning, after all, and perhaps the usherance of death was for everything within the city. 

 

She pushed Jarrett ahead on the path, leading him to the stables, which had been emptied with the last of the de Rolo’s mounts all expended to the war effort. It still smelled of manure and wetness, a scent it seemed could not be burned away. The doors swung open and shut, creaking slightly as they did, as she led him to the stall at the very end of the barn, where the slats let in just enough sunlight to brighten the place up. 

 

“Alright, in you go.”, she told him as she locked the stable door behind Jarrett. “Sober up a bit and we’ll talk in the morning.”

 

Vex cut across the courtyard, keeping her gaze steadfast, away from the chaos of the Sun Tree. The sun itself was swinging low over the horizon, where the jagged stump of the mountain rose as a shadow that shielded Grog and Vax from her line of sight, admitting the latest surge of refugees from the valley. The line wound downwards, breaking occasionally as stragglers from the assembled armies elbowed their ways forward to claim their place within the city ahead of the village families. 

 

Human nature it seemed, was a light that would never be quelled. 

 

She would have done something, if a bone-dead tiredness had not set into her body as she raced up the castle’s ramparts to the quarters she shared with Percy. 

 

He was just as she had left him, sitting at the top of his bed, his back supported by the cold silver headboard that matched the posts. She had hung canvas curtains to keep the servants who had lived through the battle from growing unhealthily curious.

 

Percy was spinning his revolver in his free hand, its empty clicks echoing across their room. The barrel of the gun had been stripped to a sharp, craggy point, the very edge of which was bent into a beckoning finger. Cool blue eyes flicked up at her over thin gauze, and she wanted desperately to kiss him again, as much as the bandages over the seeping burns on his face would allow. Pike was expected to breach the lines with Wilhand in tow within the next day or so, and healing the wounds from a dragon’s blast would have to wait until her more effective corporeal form was present. 

 

“I was hoping I would find you awake, Percival. Just the man I need for the moment.”

 

She was grinning underneath the film of grime that had come to cover her hair and face, the sweat that had poured to her breastplate making the thin metal glitter in the light of sunset.

 

“I’m a bit useless at this moment.”, he scoffed, his usual pompousness only slightly muffled by the rawness of his throat. The revolver’s wheel spun again, and Vex was faced with another empty slide, ready for a bullet to be poured inside of it and shot. 

 

“Percival.”

 

“Vex’ahlia.”

 

“Don’t say that.”

 

She had pulled open the curtains around his bed, so that Percy had a clear line of sight through to the courtyard, where the crowds of refugees wrestled weapons from their army and pierced the bark of the Sun Tree. 

 

“I hate to ask for a man’s opinion on politics, but there are people out there partaking in the destruction of property. More specifically, that is our property. And in the interest of this democracy of yours, perhaps you might be able to explain to me why we are allowing it to happen. We were at war, Percy, not in the jungle.”, she teased, considering herself justly rewarded as his bloody lips curled upwards in a small smile. 

 

“Only you would ask for a history lesson in the middle of the Hells on earth.”

 

“Only you would know enough to give me one.”, she chuckled, throwing herself back on the bed. Percy’s sheets were beginning to look dirty, bearing the sandy stains of drying blood, undoubtedly from him picking at himself in equal parts boredom and hatred, and perhaps they would have to talk about that, once his lesson was through.

 

She rested her head close to his hip as his story begun, mindful of the bloody gashes that ran up his side, and his fingers, torn to ribbons with the rest of his arm, a missing phantom presence in her hair.  Pike was coming soon she reminded herself, and all of that would be repaired in time, but the intimacy of the moment was fixing enough, a small moment of being so normal and unbroken that Vex could almost see them in Scanlan’s mansion rather than Percy’s castle, on their way to another adventure rather than shattered beyond hope.

 

He was telling her about Pelor and his clerics, and their propensity for revelry at festivals, how they had one among them who had enchanted the tree, turning its sap into an elixir. 

 

“So all of them, they’re drinking the sap to go and have sex? During the Hells on earth, everyone out there is still getting themselves laid.”, Vex chuckled, a touch of mocking scandal in her voice. “It does explain why my dear brother has suddenly come up with so much free time.”

 

“Not exactly.”

 

Percy continued his tale, telling her that the clerics had prayed for an elixir of wisdom and instead been granted a means of travel by the ley lines that rooted the Sun Tree to the earthen plane. A way to see into the past, if only a bit limited by the fact that even Pelor’s clerics were human, and his blessing was used more as a drug, a little kick in the pants to relieve one’s glory days, as they were.

 

“We just- we just let them?”, she asked, more to herself. 

 

“We haven’t really got a choice.”, Percy said, his already shortened breath huffed out in an exasperated sigh. “I’m sure you can understand, as well as I do, that living in the yesterdays has become very appealing, as of late. To take that solace, that I want so badly for myself, from the people there below is not something which I would support in good conscience, Vex’ahlia.” 

 

She remained silent, letting the weight of his words settle over the both of them. 

 

“Those people will kill themselves chasing a world that has passed them by.” 

 

“Those people helped us a kill a dragon. Who are we to deny them the reward of dying before they have to know what they’ve done?” 

 

Percy had begun to spin the wheel of his revolver once more, punctuating their silence with clicking. Vex found the sound so annoying that  she would have turned to wipe the smug grin from Percy's face, if Thordak’s fire had not done her the pleasure. Rather, she turned her body slightly away from him, facing the flaking walls of their room opposite the open window.

 

“Percy.”

 

“What?”

 

“The past was worse. We know that, for sure, and life has gone to shit, as of late. But living in tomorrow's has become very appealing as well, hasn’t it? Tomorrow, Pike is going to be here, and Cassandra has drawn up permits so that the market can open again the square. The day after that, my brother will begin the first services for our soldiers, and perhaps that will be something that their families can take solace from, right, Percy? I’ll be here tomorrow, with you.”

 

A pause lingered between them as though he was weighing his response in his mind. 

 

“Whatever you say, dear.”

  
  


This plan had not been haphazard, for all the weeks she had spent watching the citizens of Whitestone gouge the Sun Tree had taught her that Jarrett’s reaction was the rule, not the exception. 

 

Vex had planned to go stark raving mad, and found a place cleared enough to be safe to do so. She had bound her own wrists and ankles in front of her with a scarf, and looped a coarse rope through both, trapping herself on the dirt floor of the family’s ruined kitchen. Her knees were forced to press into her chest in an uncomfortable but necessary position, for when she would lose her foothold in the mortal plane. 

 

The first of the three vials was clenched in between her teeth, her tongue resting just at its cork. She would suck it from the glass tube, and have time to spit the objects before swallowing the potion. Observation was a poor teacher of when it would take effect, whether a drop on her tongue would do the job or if she would have to curl into her center for hours before she saw a first glimpse of a minute into the time that came before. 

 

The potion itself tasted of honeyed, watered down whiskey, a drug meant for happier times that perhaps they would have indulged in together, falling into one another's arms as a crackling fire rose in their camp. These memories had been quite a ways in the past already, as Vex tipped back her head, the liquid gently tickling the back of her throat as it went down, burning in her chest with a satisfying warmth. 

 

Thin moonlight lit the dust in the air around her, as she focused on a point just above the cleaved remains of what had once been the wall that separated a single bedroom from the kitchen. An enormous crack tapered to a sharp canyon just several feet from her face, curled into a knotted finger that beckoned forth. From the wall, the earth erupted into thin, curling spindles, rooted in their Mother in a larger and larger coil. It reached for her and touched her cheek; a cooling, sweet caress. Still, Vex resisted. Her body shuddered in rejection, yet the the roots opened into each spindle again, pulling her carefully into a cold embrace. 

 

She had shut her eyes, hearing only silence in darkness in her final moments of lucidity. Blood pumped hard in her ears, ticking like a pendulum before Vex found herself at something’s center, as though she was cased in jelly and moving forward faster and faster, if it were possible to be dizzy while standing completely at a standstill. She felt herself drop, sucking in a short breath as a small, damp wave splashed against her cheek. It tasted bloody, and her eyes shot open in panic, sending her hands groping in the darkness for the slivers of glass she felt slicing into her lips. 

 

She had forgotten to spit. 

 

Soothing numbness pulled her closer still, and in the space of a couple of breaths, she had forgotten her own blood foaming at her chin, too. 

  
  


Vex took Mother’s hand, running upon a path jeweled by two thin parallel streams, each one not wider than her wrists. She was faster here, freer and empty, her body a cloak of shadow that seemed only to appear in portions; the hand that reached to her cheek to brush away her hair, calves straining as Mother led her upwards and upwards. She could feel her breath and see only a black void where her chest would have been, bright green pinpricks of starlight visible where she would have traced the bones of her hips. 

 

She followed Mother only until she began to hear the sounds of a camp, the fire being struck and the sound of metal being brought down upon itself, a smooth clamor that she recognized instinctively as weapons being sharpened upon a smith’s table that could only be the earth itself, and there, Mother set her free in a form that was both fluid and utterly dysfunctional, her limbs heavy as syrup. She could pull forward to the very edge of their camp, watch as the faces of the party came slowly into focus and swallow the long-slaughtered guilt that came from watching as Saundor’s tree, the dead husk of her greatest battle, loomed over them. 

 

Vex searched for herself around the fire, finding her brother huddled beside Keyleth, his mouth drawn into a straight line, eyes tracking something which was beyond the woman by his side. She followed him, only because it was natural, and was met only with a tongue of flame that rose to meet her, as if it knew her and wished to warn her away from such a foolish venture. She waved her hands in front of Vax’s face, tracing his moody eyebrows with a tiny, indulgent grin as he stared through her, confirming that she was only their guest. 

 

On Keyleth’s other side was Percy, his coat still bloodied though he and Keyleth had locked arms and cheered Saundor’s taunts in a mocking refrain. Vex found herself then, weak and dazed in the post-haste of battle, smiling up at the two of them, her hand clenched tight around Fentheras, her pride and prize. 

 

She still touched the bow, huddled up beside herself in the past, feeling nothing but a rush of air as her fingers passed through it. 

 

Mother began to flip pages, catching Vex in between them, her form now ink that poured between each illustration, catching only moments of her memories as they washed downstream. The spindles flared outward, scratching together to form portraits that moved in time with their counterparts as they spoke. 

 

Artagan or Garmelie, or whoever and whatever he was, blurry at the edges as Vox Machina voted to remain another night in the Feywild, to rest and gather their resources before returning to Whitestone. 

 

“-something there. I have a feeling-” 

 

Her brother. Vax. Slow and deliberate and his words always anguished. She had not noticed this in the past, but in the memory his throat seemed to squeeze perpetually as though his heart was hurt. 

 

Percy’s sketched form  was speaking, and she could hear he said “risk”, something he would not risk and Scanlan’s eyebrow was drawn to arc upwards, his lips parted, curling to the apples of his cheeks with a barely concealed glee. Percy had kept his promise, and she wished she could tell him that. But Vex in the sketchbook was a fuzzy charcoal shape, slumped against Grog’s broad chest, his thick finger curling on the frayed ends of her braid. 

 

“Y’sure you’re alright? Vex? Hello? Bidet?” 

 

He shook her and Vex watched as her eyes opened up wide, drowsy and dull with exhaustion. 

 

“Just taking a nap.”, she yawned, still barely awake. 

 

Fentheras was still clutched by her side, a detail missing from the memories she had. Vex’s grip on the bow only tightened as her body relaxed, her free hand reaching up to free Trinket from her necklace. 

 

He burst forth as she remembered, filling Vex with a sudden rush of emotion that forced her ink and starlight body to flicker as though there was an earthquake concentrated just over her stomach. 

 

Trinket was unusually clear in Mother’s drawings, looking painted where the others were scratched together, only afterthoughts where her cheek hollowed as he licked the dried blood from her newly knitted wounds. He circled her and nudged Grog away, curling around Vex in the picture as she kicked out in her sleep. Grog faded to Scanlan’s side, and her brother volunteered to take the first watch, no doubt to watch over her as she slept. 

 

“I will stay as well.”, Artagan said, crouching beside Vax in the razed clearing. “Call it a feeling, but I believe there will be plenty to see tonight, don’t you agree?” 

 

Mother shut the book abruptly then, skipping ahead the chapters between them and a bookmark that rose like the tattered flags of Whitestone over the hazy Feywild sky. Her fingers skimmed the page numbers at the very bottom corners, where Vex felt herself drawn with a startling quickness. 

 

The spindles retracted their ends, their ink dripping until they drowned out the picture, a sea of blue that bled into black until the scene before her disappeared. 

  
  


She opened her eyes again, but the camp before her was now shrouded in a green and black haze, curls of smoke tickling in her sky lungs. It was always just after dusk in the Feywild, but the darkness had taken on a frantic quality, far too charged to simply be a usual empty absence of light. 

 

Vex could hear someone shouting, and the little kick underneath her heart could confirm that was her brother. 

 

Something muffled the sound of their camp, but the picture which was drawn before her was so real she could touch the feathers of Vax’s cloak as he spun away, his cowl cutting through her form as he turned to kick at the ground. 

 

Percy was running up behind him, grabbing him, pulling him back towards whatever crisis had spawned beside the dying firelight. 

 

“She won't let go, Vax.”, Keyleth’s voice carried from a point beyond where Vex could see her party. 

 

“Gods fucking dammit fuck.”

 

Vex could see the curves of her precious bow before she could see her own body, lying prone at Grog’s feet, as he pulled at each of its smooth ends, all vain attempts to dislodge it from her hand. She could hear the sick, wet, crunch of her shoulder separating and gasped involuntarily for the pain she soon discovered she did not feel as she watched. 

 

It was Keyleth, or Scanlan who rushed forward with a healing spell, blurs of purple and yellow that ceded as Vax shoved them backwards. 

 

“Stop. Stop it, we’ll fix that later. Just get that...thing away from her. This is not- this will not happen again.”

 

She cut through the gaggle of bodies in the party, stopping just short of her own boots in the earth below them. Trinket, a muddy brown silhouette cloaked in yellow smoke, pawed at her face. 

 

Scanlan had lied to her. 

 

The illness she had suffered through shortly after their return from the Feywild had nothing to do out of drinking from the rivers. 

 

Of course, she had been right to assume that Saundor would have cursed them. 

 

But why would Scanlan have lied about something so obvious?

 

Vax was on the ground beside her, trying to pry her fingers from the bow’s handle.

 

“I don't understand how this happened. We checked for traps, we stayed another night to spare the risk that something could happen to her on our return. We didn't leave her alone- unless-”

 

“Nobody did anything! We just- I was taking a shit, over there, in full view and your sister started screaming so I ran over, pants down, mind you- and suddenly she's-”, Scanlan gestured rather crudely to where Vex watched as her body writhed at their feet. Her sleeve had torn at the wrist, exposing thick, dark liquid that froze into peaks several inches tall, piercing her bracers as they slowly melted further up her skin. 

 

Vax had dislodged her fingers from the bow’s grip, the murk dripping down his own fingernails as her thumb sprung back, her palm curling around its grip once more, with a sick, sucking noise that sounded very much like many tiny, rubbery mouths. 

 

Her brother shoved himself backwards in frustration, kneeling over her as his fists pounded the dirt in futile effort. 

 

“Percy- Grog- Where is he? Where is that bastard satyr- creature- how do we know this wasn't his doing-his plan this entire time?” 

 

Percy’s eyes swept their camp, his glasses foggy with sweat and panic. 

 

“Invisible, I would suppose. But we have not made the best...kind of impression on him and I would not be surprised if indeed he-”

 

“Don't say that.” Vax shoved the palms of his hands into his face and made a soft groaning noise. “Look, hasn't she been through enough? If my sister- my sister- gets fucked over by a half-rabbit gnome then I swear the the Gods that-”

 

“Oh lay off the gnomes- I'm as worried about her and you are. Even more-” 

 

Scanlan and Vax bickered into a swirling messy noise, twigs cracking and voices sharpening until there was only a silence that opened from within her chest. 

  
  


The maw gaped open, rolling Vex around on it’s tongue, between its bloodied lips and its mouth wet with copper. She circled the drain and a tongue flicked out against her, crushing her body against its teeth, shattering her into a million pieces which gathered in the air above her party, a cornered satyr between their sueded boots. 

 

“Take your proper form you little trickster.”, Vax seethed. 

 

“And you really believe you are in a position...to speak to me that way.”, Garmelie warbled, sitting back on his fat hind haunches, his sharp and tiny teeth glittering of ivory in the moonlight. 

 

“Damn right I am. That is my sister, you unholy dick. Her life is not- it cannot be a game.”

 

Garmelie chuckled. “All of your lives are but a game. Oh, who’s to say one is not seated beyond the veil, pulling my strings as my puppetmaster…The theater, as you said...the theater is many-formed thing.”

 

He stood to his full height, passing through Vex’s center as his long limbs took form, the sharp slope of his nose rippling her gaze, as though a single droplet moved through the scene before her. She blinked them back into focus, collecting herself enough to follow after her brother. 

 

Vax’s daggers were polished bright in his belt, and his body reeked of boyish anger, unkempt as the flyaways of his braids. Her hand cuts through the stale air, to smooth down his hair before he flits away to stand by her side, where Vex remembers, that is her after all, her back arched against the grass and her forearm taut with strain still gripped around the bow.

 

Artagan wafted forward, his hair carrying with it the faint scent of a stamped out campfire, whose sparks might still jump to catch fire as he knelt beside her prone body. 

 

“Oh. A curse. A tasty little thing.”, he stage-whispered, smile growing ever larger in the swollen moonlight. “A delicious poison, aren’t you? Oh, you slippery thing- in her blood, I see.” 

 

Artagan sucked in the air across the top of Vex’s chest, hungry to whet his appetite upon the very taste of Curses. He had been starved of the luxury, Vex knew, as she watched her body turn involuntarily towards him from her bedroll and her tongue lolled from her mouth, in a spreading smile that split her lips and claimed her expression slowly, horrifyingly as that of the curse.

 

“Oh, yes. Pesky, pesky things.”, he whispered, almost as if he were flirting with the thing. The archfey sprung up, avoiding a stream of vomit that suddenly spurted from her mouth, dark and viscous entirely unlike anything that was the natural product of a material body. 

 

“She will need to be fed, three meals made from that which is her own blood.”, he told them, coldly. “These...tricksters...these swine who roamed this plane in the past were uncivilized to say the least, but the magic is...ancient. Far stronger than-”, he swallowed, then, his throat thick and his tongue lapping at dry lips. 

 

“ _ Her blood spilled at birth; must be spilled to be born again, lest her bitterness take root and grow. _ ”, he repeated. Artagan’s voice seemed to smooth, his reverence apparent even as Vex’s vision clouded with a screen of smoke that blurred Grog and Scanlan at their corners. 

 

“And what the fuck does that mean?”, Scanlan shouted desperately. 

 

“Feed her- feed her her own child.”

 

“My sister has no children!”, Vax’s desperation rushed up from the ground to meet her floating form; a solid; stone outcropping that caught Vex in blurry dissonance, where she felt her lips pressed together, the bloody crunch of glass jolting her into the present. 

 

Mother took her hand, scraped and stiff, as if to pull her away, like a child who had seen something they shouldn’t. Vex could hear her chiding in the overhanging twigs, scratching against the clay window of the little cottage; just the same as she could hear the strangled noise at the back of her brother’s throat that she clung to, as the curtains of the scene tore to tatters before her eyes. 

 

Artagan shrugged, his shoulders pushing at the very edges of Vex’s shadow, as if it was no consequence to him that her prone from lay crumpled at his feet. Should she die here, Vex supposed Artagan would relish watching the life drain from her, judging from the lecherous, hungry flitting of his eyes across her body. 

 

Trinket growled; spit seething from between his teeth as Artagan knelt beside Vex, his long fingers reaching out to brush her collarbone, glistening with pale sweat. Her pendant hung at the hollow of her throat, and his hand could nearly close the gap between her neck and her bosom. Artagan seemed to suck in breath with the rising and falling of her chest, his energy pulsing with increasing urgency. 

 

“No...but you sister...she has spilled her blood in bringing another to life. A bond, like that of a mother and a child. It will do.”

 

Vax visibly scoffed; his entire body rolling forward with discontent. “What? I’m older. I was born first.”, he said, a truth of the universe that could never go without mention. 

 

“That’s not what he means, shitbird.”, Scanlan murmured with a small groan. 

 

“What does he- oh- oh yeah, that’s kind of dark though- and she would kill us.”, Keyleth spoke up. 

 

“But she would be here to kill us.”, Percy told them, in breathless indignation. “She needs to be here.”

 

She could feel Vax tense in fear; undefined with jagged edges. “What-”

 

“He means Trinket. And if he- he is being truthful about this curse, then we haven’t much time left.” 

  
  


She felt herself floating. 

 

A galaxy of shock stars, swirling her into the pulse of a single desperate cry, as she watched Grog positioned above her body, his chest clawed nearly down to impossibly white bone as Trinket struggled against him, his primal cry echoing through the empty bog as pain and rage rippled into one single, red-hot pillar that held her companion still against a solid expanse of tattered skin. 

 

“Now! What the fuck- “, someone shouted, their voice indistinguishable against the sound of the muzzle of Percy’s gun being loaded, a screeching, long scratch of metal against metal as his bullets fell into a bed of sifted black powder.

 

“Why is it taking so long-” 

 

“Shut Up-”

 

Cannon fire sounded from Percy’s direction; a violent recoil knocking him backwards; though his body, stoic and strong held fast against the scream of fire that sparked, bloody bright against Vex’s lips, as a splash of gore exploded forward, coating her bed of grass in blood and obscenity. A patch of fur, soaked with torn tendons and dripping of fat and muscle sloshed against her chest; coating her necklace with a thick sheen of red-black that smelled like copper and smoke. 

 

The blackness that had enveloped half her body then seemed to recoil, shrivelling from the shower of her salvation; warm as it ran down her chest. Vex could watch as her own eyes flicked open; before surrendering again to the tide pulling her under, away from the battle raging above her body. Darker droplets splashed up her cheeks, forcing her to turn away, burrowing her face into the grass. 

 

Vax’s familiar hands found her again, pulling her face upwards towards his, her sopping body against his dry cloaks. “Hey-”

 

Artagan has watched this scene with a pleasure Vex could hardly deny, as though the blood coating the front of his ornate robes may well be golden flakes carved from the sun itself. His hands clenched and unclenched into tight fists by his sides, as though he could hardly control what Vex could suddenly see was an unbridled, eager kind of bloodlust. 

 

“Clean her up- best you can, and do heal up your friend!”, he said, with a bitter tone that almost belied the regret he felt that it was all over. “Then, prepare your hearth! It’s time for a feast!” 

  
  


Stew, rare and coarse, chunky with cuts made from a still-shaking, hesitant knife; boiled over greens and seasoned with grainy salt that tasted like flecks of stone dribbled down Vex’ahlia’s chin, propped up against her brother and her stony-faced friends; Keyleth’s jeweled fingers holding a ladle to her mouth. 

 

“That’s it, Vex.” 

 

In Whitestone; an unholy scream echoed from a small caved-in cottage beyond the city’s center; losing itself in the din of the city on a cold, quiet night. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> So the working title of this was"the trinket death fic everyone's been waiting for.", and wait they did for 18 months lol 
> 
> Anyway, I hope you all enjoyed reading this, and anyone who wants to talk about more than in the comments can come and hmu on tumblr, where i'm now going by shutupandbuyporg because i'm star wars trash; or else on the discords i'm on, we probably have a few in common! :)


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